A man has been sentenced to 24 years for a brutal rape and assault committed more than two decades ago, the same crime for which another man was wrongly imprisoned for 17 years. Paul Quinn was told he would serve a lengthy term after a court finally established that he, and not the man originally convicted, was responsible for the 2003 attack that became one of Britain's most troubling miscarriages of justice.
The sentence reflected the gravity of what the judge described as an extreme and unusual case. Taking the two rape counts as the lead offences, the judge imposed a custodial element of 21 years, noting that this went above the normal guideline range even for the most serious category of rape, and added a further three-year extension period on account of Quinn's dangerousness, bringing the total to 24 years.
Separate terms were attached to the other charges he faced. The count relating to the strangulation of the woman carried a sentence of 12 years, while the count covering the serious injuries inflicted on her was set at seven years. All of the sentences were ordered to run concurrently, with the rape counts driving the overall length of the term he must now serve.
The judge also set out what the sentence would mean in practice. Quinn will be released from custody no later than two-thirds of the way through the 21-year custodial element, which amounts to release after 14 years, with 633 days already served on remand counting towards that time. After his release he will remain on licence in the community and can be recalled to prison if he breaches its conditions.
Further orders followed the prison term. Quinn was certified as convicted of a sexual offence, meaning he must keep police informed of his personal details indefinitely, and he will be barred for an indefinite period from working with children and other vulnerable people under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, formal consequences that will follow him long after he leaves prison.
The case is inseparable from the wrongful conviction it produced. Andrew Malkinson served 17 years behind bars for the attack, insisting throughout that he was innocent, and he was eventually proven right. The woman who survived the assault gave evidence at the original trial in 2004, only to be told years later by police that the wrong man had been convicted and that she might have to relive the ordeal in court all over again.
She did exactly that, returning to give evidence a second time. The judge declined to use her name and refused to label her a complainant, a victim or even a survivor, choosing instead to call her a hero, and singling her out as the person from the case he would remember for the rest of his days. He praised the courage it took to support a prosecution through two trials separated by many years.
The court heard that the attack itself had been savage, with the woman strangled into a prolonged unconsciousness, left with a broken cheekbone that required surgery, and subjected to two rapes before being abandoned, seriously injured, in an isolated spot where she was effectively left for dead until a passing dog walker came to her aid. Quinn, who had moved away from Manchester and changed his life in the years after the offence, will now begin a sentence that closes a case that wrongly cost an innocent man nearly two decades of his freedom.